Candidates enter home stretch with debates, ads

Nan Hayworth and Sean Patrick Maloney must be trying to set some kind of record for number of debates.

BY NATHAN BROWN

Nan Hayworth and Sean Patrick Maloney must be trying to set some kind of record for number of debates.

There were two more in the past week — one sponsored by News 12, and one before the Poughkeepsie Journal editorial board. And there was one that should have been in last week's column that I missed — on Oct. 17 at the Putnam Regional Chamber of Commerce. And there's another planned for Tuesday in Westchester County by WRNN-TV.

Also last week, Rep. Chris Gibson, R-Kinderhook, and Democratic challenger Julian Schreibman met for their final debate at SUNY Oneonta. Fiscal policy and Medicare were the main topics, according to an article in the Oneonta Daily Star.

Maloney, the Democratic candidate for the 18th District seat, came out with four new TV spots last week — "Putting Middle Class First," "Radical Record," "Wrong" and "Cracked."

The first one doesn't mention Hayworth, the Republican incumbent; the middle two are pure anti-Hayworth attack ads; the last starts attacking Hayworth, then Maloney spends most of the rest of the commercial talking about his message.

The theme of all of them is that Maloney will protect Medicare and women's health-care funding, and favors making the rich "pay their fair share," while Hayworth won't.

The middle two ads feature footage of Hayworth saying "I am proud to be a radical," at a Tri-State Sons of Liberty rally in 2010. She said it eight times by my count, in statements like, "If it is radical to ask our government to let us keep more of what we worked so hard to earn, than I am proud to be a radical."

Gibson also came out with a new ad, "Misleading." The first 10 seconds or so accuse Schreibman's campaign of being misleading; the rest is similar to Gibson's previous ads, showing him with voters, in mostly rural settings, as he talks about his agenda. This is the first ad by Gibson's campaign that attacks Schreibman directly, although numerous ads by outside groups have done so.

And, the American Medical Association Political Action Committee came out with a pro-Hayworth ad, "One of Us."

President Barack Obama endorsed Schreibman. The Medical Society of the State of New York endorsed Hayworth, as did ConservAmerica, a group that backs Republicans they view as pro-environment. The New York Times endorsed Maloney.